PENDLETON — U.S. Congresswoman Victoria Spartz held a town hall-style meeting in Pendleton on Saturday morning.
Spartz, who represents Indiana’s 5th District, discussed a variety of issues during an hour-long meeting in a crowded room at the Pendleton Community Public Library.
Her overarching point was that the United States is too divided.
“We do have challenges in the country,” Spartz said. But I’ll be honest with you, it’s a challenging time. The country’s divided, the country has a lot of drama going on right now.”
While she is on the opposite side of President Joe Biden on most issues, she blames Congress for a lot of the challenges going on.
“We have to govern, and Congress hasn’t been governing for a long time,” said Spartz, whose will face Democratic challenger Jeannine Lake in November’s election. “It’s not for the first time or the last time.. “We can’t just blame presidents, ultimately I blame Congress, too.”
On the main sources of division — the price of gas, inflation, border control and the war in Europe – she said Congress must do a better job of checking the executive branch on those matters.
“Congress is a dependent branch of government with checks and balances — it’s our responsibility to do our job,” Spartz said. “We have no accountability for the executive branch, and we don’t have that accountability because we decided not to do that.”
Spartz said the division also has roots at the state level. She said she believes liberal and conservative states have too many problems between one another and must understand that each state can make its own policies.
“Some of the states will have policies that you may not like, but whether you like it or not, you have to respect state rights. This is something we have to do as a society,” Spartz said. “We need to be more respectful. There are bigger enemies around the world that want to strike us, and they want that war to start internally.”
In response to a question about weapons manufacturers being required to add more safety features, Spartz said the country is fine with what’s already in place.
“I’m a big believer in the Second Amendment, it’s a very important right,” Spartz said. “As a law-abiding citizen you should have the right to protect yourself against a potential police state or bad guys.”
Spartz said you can’t stop bad people from doing bad things, but you can educate people and give people the right to protect themselves. She said government should stop infringing on individuals’ rights, and that taking legal guns away from people won’t solve the issue.
“As a society we need to think about how we can learn to not be afraid of guns,” Spartz said. “We’re so afraid to talk about guns and talk to our children about guns.”
Responding to a question regarding student loan debt, Spartz said that the education system must be significantly reformed. She says a lot of the jobs in the future might not even require college degrees.
“We are pushing kids into enormous amounts of debt,” Spartz said. “Kids get worthless degrees, and they end up not being able to pay for it.
“We can not just keep continuing this, we need to reform the system to make sure kids can pay it off.”
Spartz also discussed law enforcment’s search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida. Spartz and other Indiana Republicans met with Trump just a few days after the search was conducted, she said. She said she believes the issue could have been solved without involving a search warrant and the FBI.
“Getting the FBI involved is very, very dangerous. We can not have a police state,” Spartz said. “Regardless of how you feel, nobody should be treated like that.”
According to her, Democrats care more about going after Trump than they do about solving issues with the power they have in goverment.
“They are constantly on him. How much energy have they spent attacking him,” Spartz said. “The Democrats are in charge now, so govern. Do something, show that you can govern.”